One of the major differences between shopping in a mall vs. shopping online is that you lose the chance to share your shopping experience with your friends when you’re shopping online.  For a lot of people, that experience of finding new things and trying on outfits with their friends is the best part about shopping.  Even with all the buzz and technological advances in ecommerce this psychological difference is one of the main reasons that ecommerce is still only a measly 5% of total retail sales.

There’s evidence that this is about to change though, and it’s likely that ecommerce sales are going to continue to grow at a rapid pace.  Retailers and technology companies are working hard to inject the social experience into ecommerce and allow you to include your friends even when you’re shopping alone on your computer.  Let’s take a look at a few of the more exciting developments.

Amazon + Facebook

Amazon has always been one of the leaders in the ecommerce space, but their new integration with Facebook pushes the bar even higher.  When you sign in to your Amazon account you can choose to connect to Facebook’s “Open Graph” so that all of your friends and interests that you’ve indicated on Facebook can be read by Amazon.  Armed with that data, Amazon can provide personalized recommendations on new books, music, and movies related to your interests and even suggest new items based on what your friends like.  Amazon also displays all of your friends that have birthdays coming up along with personalized gift recommendations for them so that you can easily buy a gift for them based on their interests and have it shipped to their address.  This makes gift buying and finding new things that you might like infinitely easier.

Blippy

While many people might find sharing your credit card purchase history with your friends might be a little bit too creepy, Blippy has gained a strong following of people that want to do just that.  Blippy is very similar to Twitter – except your stream of information contains all of your recent credit card purchases.  You can hook your credit card into Blippy so that it automatically publishes your spending (detailed by item) to your stream where your followers can check in and see what you’ve purchases.  The cool thing about Blippy is that it does a great job of sparking discussion among friends that may never have happened if it wasn’t made public on Blippy.  Say you’re interested in a new CD or movie, but you’re unsure of whether it’s worth the price.  Then you see that same CD of movie show up in your friend’s feed – now you can comment directly in the the stream and ask for your friend’s review.  If you’re concerned about privacy then Blippy isn’t for you, but if you want to see what your friends are buying it might be worth a look.

Diesel Cam

This isn’t necessarily an innovation in ecommerce, but rather a blend between the in-store experience and your social life online. Diesel is a chain of teen-focused retail stores in Spain, and they have started a new campaign that at the very least has got people talking.  They’ve installed cameras in their fitting rooms that connect directly to Facebook so you can snap photos of the different clothes you’re thinking of buying and get comments and suggestions directly from your friends while you’re at the store.  In theory this increases the social aspect of shopping because you’re able to involve more of your friends in the purchase even if they aren’t able to be there with you.  Just like Blippy, this innovation brings its share of privacy concerns because the fitting room is an inherently private place.  Nevertheless, you’re probably more likely to be excited about a purchase if you upload a photo and immediately get comments from your friends on how good it looks.

Groupon, Living Social

Deal of the day websites seem to be the latest craze with more and more of them popping up all the time.  The unquestioned leader in this space is Groupon, but smaller competitors like LivingSocial are also making headway. What’s brilliant about these sites is that there is a strong incentive to share them with your friends and encourage them to buy the same deal you did.  If I buy a Groupon and then share the deal on Facebook and Twitter I can get an even further discount or the deal absolutely free if a few of my friends purchase from my link.  So everytime I make a purchase I might as well spread it along in hopes that someone else might like it as well.  If my friend likes the deal we both win.  This is how Groupon has been able to grow so quickly and become an in-demand resource for local businesses.

Online shopping is getting closer and closer to reproducing the social experience that has given in-store shopping the upper-hand.  Does your ecommerce site involve any kind of social experience?